


somewhere we've not been before

by hydrospanners



Series: renegade [13]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: And he's going to prove it, Docember 2018, During Class Story, F/M, Falling In Love, First Dates, Fluff, He's a doctor, In which Doc is the cure for what ails her, Nar Shaddaa, One Shot, Some sin, Trust Him, much fluff, not terribly explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 14:58:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16915056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: After weeks of casual encounters and stolen moments, Doc and Rea finally go on a proper date. Or a date, anyway. Proper isn't really their style.





	somewhere we've not been before

**Author's Note:**

> If you are the sort of person who enjoys soundtracks, I recommend listening to It's Strange by Louis the Child while reading this.

He watches her from the door, leaning against the frame in that signature pose of his. Rea thinks there’s a smile hiding under that stupid mustache, but she doesn’t get a chance to look for it before she has to move.

 

It’s a memory she’s fighting. A ghost with a lightsaber that hums in her mind as it passes through the place her head had just been. She sees the flash of red in her memory as she drops to one knee, rolling away from its reach. She remembers how the Sith stood behind her, how he raised his hand and she felt the rising crest of his power just a little too late.

 

But this time she knows it’s coming. This time she turns, glances over her shoulder just in time to glimpse the lightning that sparks between his fingers. This time, she moves before it strikes her and she isn’t paralyzed by the electricity when he reaches for the detonator. This time, she twists, slides under the Sith’s guard in the blink of an eye. This time, she buries a saber in his spinal column before he can so much as move.

 

She imagines the blink of shock, the way his jaw would slip open in surprise, how the power pulsing in his hand would fizzle. She imagines how it would feel to drive her other saber through his heart, to watch the light leave his eyes. How it would feel to watch the dark storm of him fizzle out into nothing. Into quiet.

 

Rea trades her sabers for a towel and dabs at her sweat-slicked face. What’s done is done. Dwelling on it won’t bring back the dead.

 

“You look awfully nice,” she says over the new scar on her shoulder.

 

“Nice?” Doc huffs from the doorframe. “I think you mean ‘devastatingly handsome.’”

 

Rea turns, raking her eyes over the lean lines of his body. With the way his suit is tailored, she’d say ‘devastatingly handsome’ is a serious undersell. He looks starsdamned delicious, the pearly gleam of his skin all the more striking against the wine-red fabric and crosh hide trim. The sleek silhouette is modern and elegant and he wears it naturally as anything, completely at home in the luxury of it.

 

He couldn’t look more out of place on her ship if he tried. “Too handsome for the _Renegade_ ,” she agrees. “Hot date tonight?”

 

He is definitely smiling under that stupid moustache. “Well, that depends,” he says.

 

“Depends on what?” It’s not like he needs her permission to practice his charm on someone else. They don’t have that kind of a thing.

 

“On how fast you can clean up, Gorgeous.”

  


# # #

  
  


Turns out Junior was right about her clothes. There’s nothing in Rea’s wardrobe but beat up combat suits, battered armor, and frayed leatheris jackets, all in shades of black and brown and grey. Makes him wish he’d gone for the little blue number instead of the shimmery silver one. Stars know she looks good in everything (and _especially_ good in nothing) but she needs a little color in her life.

 

“You know this is weird, right?” She shouts from the ‘fresher, where she’s cleaning and dressing faster than he’d imagined a person could. It’s a testament to Doc’s will that he’s firmly planted on her bed, even knowing she’s standing there in nothing but her underwear--and maybe not even that--with her skin glowing and fresh from the sonic. Warm and supple, soft as velvet...

 

“It’s thoughtful,” he shouts back. “And charming.”

 

“This dress is _tailored_ , Doc. How do you even know my measurements?”

 

“Hours of careful study.” Her laughter echoes against the close, metallic walls of the ‘fresher. “Not to rush you, Beautiful, but I did make a reservation. Had to bribe a guy and everything.”

 

“Bribe?” Her head peeks out of the doorframe, blue eyes narrowed at him. “With whose credits?”

 

For someone who burns through money like a fire through hyperdrive fuel, his Jedi can be pretty stingy. She won’t hesitate to lavish the droids in expensive upgrades or shower Red in those stealth field generators she’s always breaking, but when it comes to the little pleasures in life, Rea’s tighter than the Hutt cartel.

 

“Why don’t you let ol’ Doc worry about that? Just for tonight.”

 

Her gaze turns even sharper. “You holding out on me, Kimble?”

 

She likes to remind him, now and again, that she knows his full name and isn’t afraid to use it. As if he could forget.

 

“I would never. Now scoot, Gorgeous. We’ve got fifteen minutes before fashionably late is just late.”

  


# # #

  


She doesn’t miss how the waiter’s eyes linger on her date’s mouth. How they follow every stretch and quirk of Doc’s lips, how they caress the sharp line of his shoulders and revel in the elegant movement of his hands. From the shit-eating grin he shoots her as the kid stammers through the wine list, Rea guesses Doc hasn’t missed it either.

 

Well. Two can play at that game.

 

“I’m not much of a wine girl,” she laments, settling her elbows on the table and folding her arms beneath her breasts as she flutters her eyelashes up at their waiter. His wide eyes dutifully follow the plunging neckline of her gown to the swell of her cleavage, ghosting over the curve of her biceps too as he takes a gulp of air. “But I love to experiment with new things, and you seem like a man with experience. Do you have anything I might like?”

 

His cheeks burn to an even darker scarlet and he tugs at the high collar of his uniform, trying desperately to redirect his gaze from her breasts to her eyes. It doesn’t seem to be working.

 

“I, um--You, uh, might--Well--” Whatever tenuous grasp the kid had on his feelings evaporates as she leans forward, staring up at him like he’s the most interesting man in the world. His desire rushes out of him in waves, swallowing up everyone in his orbit. Rea can feel it taking root in her, spreading through her like warm honey in her veins. It makes it hard to keep her eyes on this adorable Zeltron kid instead of the man she really wants, but she always has loved a challenge.

 

Rea crosses her legs to the side of the table, making sure the waiter gets a good view, and hums a sound of encouragement.

 

“Why don’t you just surprise us?” Doc’s voice cuts through the haze, startling the kid out of his lusty stupor. Not that looking Doc’s way is any kind of improvement on the waiter’s predicament. From the look on his face, he’s as captivated by her date’s lazy grin as Rea is.

 

She prefers it that way, she decides. A challenge is no fun if it’s too easy to win.

 

The waiter stumbles through some kind of assent and leaves their table on unsteady legs. Rea watches him leave with keen eyes, digging deep with her own senses, beneath the attraction and the awe and the nerves, searching for any hint that their aggressive interest is making him actually uncomfortable. She doesn’t find anything but a hopeful, horny kid who can’t believe his own luck.

 

When she turns back to Doc, he’s grinning at her with the most obvious delight. It’s the kind of look that would make a lesser woman go weak at the knees. The kind that leaves her fighting the urge to grab him by the lapels and devour him whole, right here in the middle of this swanky mobster restaurant.

 

Instead, she gives him a knowing smile and shakes her head, toying with the rim of her water glass. “He’s a little young,” she tells him, just to be sure they’re on the same page. The kid is a year or two past twenty if she’s any judge, which is fine, but there’s something in his wide-eyed awe that leaves her feeling queasy. Like he wouldn’t be able to say no, even if he really wanted to.

 

Nothing sexy about that.

 

“Seems like he could use some confidence,” Doc agrees, his dark eyes boring into her. “I think we can probably help with that.”

 

“Some of us more than others,” she grins, tossing her artfully tousled hair.

 

“Wanna bet on that?”

 

“You have to ask?”

  


# # #

  


The waiter leaves his number with the check. Doc knew which way this was gonna go by the third drink--the kid was so captivated by Rea’s neckline a Miraluka would’ve seen it--but that doesn’t make giving up his hard-earned credits any easier. Especially looking as good as he does tonight.

 

He’d really thought he was getting somewhere with that thing about the kid’s smile, too.

 

“Don’t take it too hard,” Rea consoles him, her grin only a little smug. “This dress of yours did most of the work.”

 

The shimmering fabric of it shifts against her thighs as she stands, outlining every mouth-watering swell and curve of her. Doc indulges himself in a long, thorough look before conceding. “You may have had an unfair advantage.”

 

It isn’t exactly comforting, knowing how little effort it took for her to win. Would it really have been so hard for the kid to give his holonet ID to _both_ of the absurdly attractive people trying to seduce him? It’s what Doc would’ve done.

 

Rea pats his arm, laughing. “You can wear it next time.”

 

Despite the bruises on his ego, Doc finds himself grinning. “Next time,” he agrees. He isn’t sure she meant that as promise of another date (she didn’t and he knows it) but he decides it doesn’t matter. There’s this place on Coruscant he’s dying to show her, and forgiveness is more his style than permission anyway.

  


# # #

  


Doc can’t wait to see her face when he hands her the bottle.

 

It’s almost too easy, lifting the keycard from the salesgirl’s pocket. Falling all over him like she is, running her hands over every part of him above the belt, pressing her whole body against his. Finding creative ways to display her extremely ample cleavage.

 

She’s a pretty enough girl, another Zeltron like most of the Cartel’s front line, all wide eyes, perfect curls, and symmetry. Not as young as she wants him to think, with her fluttering lashes and manufactured blushes, but she has the sort of perfect, dewy skin to pull it off. And a voluptuous, exaggerated figure to distract anyone who isn’t convinced. Too exaggerated to be achieved without surgical assistance.

 

But Doc isn’t buying what she’s selling. Not tonight.

 

“I wonder if you accommodate private tastings?” He asks the girl in a whisper, rounding out the Huttese in his best Imperial drawl. “My Master has very particular taste, and I like to be quite—“ he pauses significantly, looking deep into her violet eyes “—thorough in my work. I like to focus and take my time. To really explore every note and flavor.”

 

“Good wine is best when savored,” the salesgirl agrees, running her hand up the lapel of his suit. “I’m sure I can arrange something for you, Mr. Quinn.”

 

“Doctor, actually. And thank you.”

 

“A doctor? I do love a man who’s good with his hands.” She flutters her eyelashes at him again, and Doc’s surprised to find himself not at all enticed by the blush she wears so well. She plucks at his jacket playfully before she turns, throwing a sultry look over her shoulder as she crooks her finger at him. “Right this way, Doctor Quinn.”

 

The cellar is empty, which makes the whole thing much easier. The salesgirl doesn’t ask for explanations when he drapes a towel over her eyes, tying it securely at the back of her head. She doesn’t try to stop him when he slips the very expensive bottle of champagne from her hands.

 

She doesn’t notice he’s gone until the door hisses shut behind him.

 

He locks her in with her own keycard. He doubts there’s any kind of emergency release or intercom inside the cellar—Hutts aren’t known for their concerns about employee safety—but Doc doesn’t wait to find out. After deactivating the security tag in the label, he ruffles his hair and undoes his shirt just enough to suggest he’d received some quality customer service. No one tries to stop him as he saunters out of the shop, one bottle of champagne and three juicy secrets richer.

  


# # #

  


It’s cold on the casino’s roof, the air thick and sharp, and the violent neon lights cast everything in a harsh, sickly glow. Everything except him, of course. It’s a testament to his beauty that even a Nar Shaddaa night looks good on him.

 

“A bet’s a bet, Gorgeous.” Doc twists the cork from the champagne bottle with one practiced move. He swirls the bottle under his nose and gives a contented sigh. “Shame to drink this without proper glasses, though.”

 

“Fizzy wine is fizzy wine,” she says. Rea’s always been more of a liquor girl.

 

Doc just shakes his head. “Can’t believe I’m wasting this on someone who thinks ‘fizzy wine is fizzy wine’.” He sips at the bottle twice before passing it off.

 

She’d refuse, let him have it to himself, except he went to all the trouble of stealing it. (It was considerably less trouble than she’d expected when she bet he couldn’t.)

 

“Well?” He looks at her expectantly.

 

“Sure is fizzy,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She passes the bottle back with a hearty burp. It’ll take more than a fancy dress to take the Corellia out of _her_.

 

“Can’t figure out if I hate or love how you make every stupid thing you do seem so damn sexy.”

 

“Right back at you, Handsome.” She shoots a particularly wounded look at that fucking mustache.

 

He laughs, then sips again from the champagne, savoring the dry bitterness of it. “So you ready to pay up now?”

 

“Deal’s a deal,” she says. “And we Corellians always pay our debts.”

 

Doc snorts, because he’s known her long enough to know better by now. “How’s the shoulder?” He asks, glancing sideways at the shiny, still-pink scar.

 

“You really want to waste a question finding out?”

 

He grins. “Stingy, aren’t you?”

 

“When it matters.”

 

“Fine.” Doc turns his attention back to the neon cityscape around them. It’s loud and bright and smells like shit, but he seems to relish it as much as she does. “You keep saying how you weren’t always a Jedi, but you never say what you did before. Time to fess up, Beautiful.”

 

“I was a smuggler,” Rea admits easily, the old aches so faint she hardly even feels them. “Well, a kid who played smuggler really. My aunt and her crew did the real work. I mostly watched the door, but they let me feel like it was important.”

 

Doc raises a brow. “Hard to imagine you just watching a door. Even as a kid.”

 

“Yeah.” Rea smiles. “I wasn’t a very good smuggler.”

 

“That why you took a vow of celibacy?”

 

“Nah. The Jedi thing was Rhese’s idea.” She glances at him. “And that’s two. Better choose your third question wisely.”

 

Doc grins at her, his eyes sweeping slow and hungry from her head to her toes. She thinks again how entirely unfair it is that neon looks so damn good playing across his pearly skin. Even the fucking mustache looks good in the Nar Shaddaa lights. She buries her hands beneath her thighs and wonders how he expects her to behave when he’s sitting so close, looking like that? She wonders whether he made time in all his plans for the thing she’s been dying to do since she first laid eyes on him in that suit.

 

“All right, Gorgeous. Last question.” His voice drops to that low timber she likes best, warm and smooth and rich as honey. “What’re you wearing under that dress?”

 

It’s like he can read her starsdamned mind. Rea grins madly, too thrilled to be sultry, and leans forward just so, letting the thin strap of her gown slip from her shoulder. “Be easier to show than tell,” she purrs.

 

Behaving is overrated anyway.

  


# # #

  


One of the perks of luxury speeders is the spacious, plush seating. It’s probably the most comfortable place they’ve ever fucked, and definitely the best-smelling. It also has the perk of being their transportation for the night, so Rea can’t run off on him as soon as she’s got what she came for.

 

“You know the city pretty well for a delicate Core flower,” she says, once their breathing evens out. He’s learning that she doesn’t care much for silence, his Jedi.

 

“Lived here for a bit after med school. Did your dossiers not tell you?”

 

“You’re really holding onto that, aren’t you?”

 

“What can I say? I like for things to happen organically. Anything you wanna know, Ol’ Doc will tell you. No need to root around in my extranet history.”

 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she groans. “It’s just standard procedure. I do the same thing to anyone who sets foot on my ship. I did the same thing to my own fucking brother. Of course I checked up on you! I barely knew you, and you’re clearly too charming to be trusted.”

 

“Ouch, Gorgeous.”

 

She rolls on her side to look him in the eyes, every warm, naked inch of her pressed firmly against every warm, naked inch of him. She doesn’t share his respect for their circumstances and is very serious when she says, “I’m in the middle of some fate-of-the-whole-Republic shit right now, Kimble. If you’re waiting on me to apologize for vetting you, you’ll be waiting a long fucking time.”

 

“Noted,” he says, running a hand over the curve of her hip. She’s still damp with sweat and damn near glowing in the cabin lights. He trails his fingers down her thigh as he drinks her in. Doc is a man who knows his priorities, and tonight, _this_ is his only concern. He’s not about to risk another conversation about all that weight she’s carrying around on her masterfully sculpted shoulders. Not tonight. “Now let’s go back to the part about my irresistible charm.”

 

“Irresistible?” Rea laughs. “I never said anything about irresistible.”

 

Doc slides his hand around to the inside of her thigh, stroking his way up the expanse of warm, velvety skin. “You’ll be saying it soon, Beautiful.”

 

Priorities.

  


# # #

  


When she pictures Doc’s life before her, before Balmorra and the war, she pictures lots of clean lines and open spaces. Neutral colors, organic wood. Sullust leather and polished stone. Plenty of sumptuous throws and a few exotic trinkets with exotic stories to match. She pictured luxury and comfort. Warmth. Indulgence. Charm.

 

His place on Nar Shaddaa is nothing like Rea pictured.

 

“I can’t even imagine you here,” she admits, looking around his old bolthole, slack-jawed and shocked. It’s a cramped little place, dated and dirty, thick with the kind of grime that can only be cleansed by fire. Exactly the sort of place she would choose for herself, the sort of place she grew up in. The sort of place she always pictured him being repulsed by.

 

But it is undeniably his space. What can be cleaned is clean, and what few belongings he dared to leave here, unattended, are neat and well-ordered. A place for everything and everything in its place, just like on the _Renegade_.

 

Doc leans against the doorframe in that way again, arms crossed and bemused. “I guess there’s more to ol’ Doc than your dossiers can tell you, Gorgeous.”

 

She feels a roiling in her belly, a little spark of fear, shying away from the unknown. And somewhere in the back of her mind, Rea hears the old familiar refrain, in a voice that sounds more hers than Ranna’s with every passing day. _Everyone will betray you if you give them the chance_. The words are hardly more than a whisper, and when the pleasant rush of good food and good sex and shameless, uninhibited fun threatens to drown it out entirely, she decides to let it.

 

Whatever he’s hiding, whatever depths Teeseven’s intel didn’t manage to reach, Rea finds she’s willing to gamble on him. Archiban Frodrick Kimble may be a lying sneak, but he’s _her_ lying sneak.

 

“I can’t have you hiding things from me, Kimble,” she frowns, shooting for serious and missing the mark by lightyears. She leans back against the cheap, blocky sofa, drumming her fingers against the rough upholstery. “You’ve forced my hand. For the safety of the galaxy, I’m gonna have to investigate you. Thoroughly.”

 

Doc raises his hands in an open-palmed gesture of surrender that somehow doesn’t look quite as supplicating as it should with the way he’s smirking. “You can investigate me for as long and as often as you want, Gorgeous.”

 

“In that case, Doctor, drop your pants.”

  


# # #

  


He rolls his wrist, turning another of her bones to jelly and Rea can’t believe she went this long without knowing he could do this.

 

“Don’t tell me they teach this in medical school.”

 

“Well, I was in medical school when I learned it,” Doc says, and she can hear his smile even if she can’t see it right now. “Met this Falleen at a benefit. They could do things with their hands that you wouldn’t believe.”

 

Rea sighs as his palm kneads at the tightly coiled muscle in her shoulder, the oil on her skin warming under his touch. “Falleen are so sexy.”

 

“You say that about everyone.”

 

“Just stating facts, Archiban. I can’t help facts.”

 

He laughs, and she wishes she could see the way it makes his face glow, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. She can’t remember the last time she felt so relaxed, so weightless and warm. So… _content_.

 

His thumbs dig into the muscles along her spine, and Rea damn near purrs.

 

With the things he’s doing to her body, she doesn’t think she can be blamed when she asks for a happy ending.

 

# # #

 

“In a walker?”

 

Rea takes another swig from the bottle.

 

“In a prison cell?”

 

She drinks again.

 

“At a funeral?”

 

“Does it count if I wasn’t attending the funeral? I was just spying on it from the room next door.”

 

Doc lifts his brow. “It counts, but I have questions.”

 

She shrugs. “I’m a good multi-tasker.”

 

“What about in zero g?”

 

Rea just smiles, raising the bottle to him before tipping it back and draining the rest of the whiskey. He watches the movement of her throat as she swallows. Lets his eyes linger on her lips, wrapped around the mouth of the bottle.

 

 _Damn_.

 

“How does that even work?” He asks, ignoring how the words get a little stuck in his throat.

 

“I could show you.” She gives him one of his favorite grins, all wickedness and light. “But it would probably just make you sick. Some things you really do need the Force to appreciate.”

 

“You been with a lot of other Jedi, then?” He isn’t exactly an expert, but Doc’s met enough of her coworkers to know the Order’s reputation for celibacy is pretty well-earned. Rea is exceptional in that way. In a lot of ways.

 

“A few. Mostly when I was younger. Been with a couple of Sith too.” She shrugs. “It’s like I said. Everyone is sexy. It really can’t be helped.”

 

Doc finds it hard to argue with that, even if he’s been too preoccupied with sharp blue eyes and sculpted muscles to look anywhere else lately. He wonders if she’s had the same problem, but he isn’t sure if he really wants the answer. He can’t decide what answer he wants to hear.

 

A beam of light passes overhead before he can settle on anything, and Rea is suddenly climbing over him, tearing the out the belly of the control panel with her bare hands. His mouth goes a little dry as he watches her ripping at the wires, ignoring the sparks as she snaps and ties and rearranges. So clever and deft and sure.

 

The engine hums to life just as the doors swish open. Someone shouts in gutteral Huttese—“There they are!”—and Ejesh’s guards start to pour into the darkened garage, all of them gleaming in garish gold armor and pointing their blaster rifles right at the speeder they’re apparently stealing.

 

Rea’s fingers wrap around the throttle, her expression pure focus, eyes alight with exhilaration, and Doc is too captivated with the sight to even notice the world falling away around them. They explode out of the garage and into open air, flipping nose to tail before gliding easily into traffic.

 

She is magnificent in that moment, hair whipping wildly in the wind, skin damn near glowing in the neon lights, laughing over the hum of the engine and the distant echo of blaster fire. Doc finds himself laughing with her, his heart hammering erratically as they speed into the night. As she turns that heart-stopping smile on him.

 

“Where to, Handsome?”

 

# # #

  


She lingers over him, foreheads pressed together, her hands fisted in the sheets by his head. He is panting beneath her, caressing her hips and waist and thighs, stroking her lightly where they are still joined. Bringing her down slowly, drawing out her pleasure as much as he can.

 

This is the fourth time she’s had him today, and she can’t help thinking how different it is.

 

“Fuck,” he whispers, breathless.

 

“Yeah,” Rea agrees. Smiles. “Fuck.”

 

She’s still quivering as she rises off of him, collapsing boneless against the sheets. His hands follow her, fingertips brushing featherlight along her clavicle, along the delicate underside of her arm. The touch is electric to her still-sensitive skin, stoking the heat inside her.

 

“You, uh—“ Archiban says, still gasping for breath between words. “You need—Can I—More?”

 

“No.” She brings his hand to her lips, kissing the back of it. Her body is still reaching, still warm and slick and incandescent. She could. She could rise and rise and rise again. He would lift her up as many times as she liked, even if he couldn’t join her at the peak.

 

But Rea finds she doesn’t want to tumble over that edge if he isn’t falling with her. Not tonight. Not after the extraordinary thing that just happened between them. Something slow, something savoring and deliberate. Electrifying. Intense.

 

Beautiful.

 

Rea can’t remember the last time she felt the stars burning inside her.

 

She lets herself relax into the comfort of her bed, into the warm body tucked around her, and the cool scratchy sheets beneath her. Sheets he hates, but apparently not enough to keep him away. “Hell of a date you planned, Kimble.”

 

She tilts her head to find him grinning down at her, looking smug despite the flush to his cheeks. “I know.”

 

“You sure can show a Jedi a good time.”

 

“I’d say that I tried, but we both know it just comes naturally.”

 

“But only four times,” she adds, grinning back and nudging him with her hip.

 

He rolls his eyes. “If you want mo--”

 

“I got everything I wanted,” she is quick to cut him off, her tone a touch more serious than she planned. “It was good, Archiban. Extraordinary. Better than I have the words to describe.”

 

He bypasses the perfect opening to tease her about her limited vocabulary and brings their joined hands to his lips instead, pressing delicate little kisses to her knuckles as he holds her gaze. It’s the kind of tenderness she ordinarily finds suffocating but--Well, she’s not a droid, is she? And it’s been so long since anyone handled her with gentleness.

 

Rea swallows down a sudden surge of emotion, turning her head so he can’t bore into her with those dark eyes. “So why’d you bring me back here of all places? I figured you booked some kinda fantasy suite, some place with chocolates on the pillows and vibrating beds.”

 

Archiban laughs. “That’s a great idea for when _you_ take _me_ on a date,” he says, sounding very certain of that happening, “but tonight was for you, Gorgeous. And you aren’t gonna enjoy yourself if you’re checking under the bed for mines.”

 

And she realizes for the first time that she is relaxed. That every muscle in her body feels like warm molasses and she hasn’t glanced at the door once. Hasn’t itched for her lightsaber or jumped at an out-of-place noise. That somewhere along the way, she stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

“Fuck,” she says, waiting wide-eyed for a spike of panic. For the walls to start closing in, for the heat between their bodies to turn unbearable. For the tension to creep up her spine and the escape routes to start mapping themselves in her mind.

 

But it doesn’t happen. Instead Rea lays there, half-curled around him and half-sprawled on top of him, their hearts beating in time, and feels nothing but comfort and pleasure and happiness. Honest to stars happiness.

 

Archiban Kimble, she is finding, is much more dangerous than she ever guessed. And the thing about Rea?

 

She can’t help chasing danger.


End file.
